On a rainy April afternoon, Emilia Clarke enters the bright, airy
Egyptian galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art the way so many
movie-lovers before her have: quoting Billy Crystal in When Harry Met
Sally. Adopting the unsourceable accent Crystal uses opposite Meg Ryan
in a famously improvised scene filmed in this very room, Clarke starts
stuttering, “Pah-pah-paprikash.” Our amused if bewildered guide, too
young to get the reference, adds the 1989 rom-com to her list of movie
recommendations from Clarke, who has already gushed about the 2017
religious drama Novitiate. Chuckling over this unlikely double feature,
Clarke assures her, “You have two incredible movies coming your way.”
One reference the guide does get: Game of Thrones, the HBO juggernaut
which stars Clarke as its most unstoppable heroine, Daenerys Targaryen.
In fact, the very tour we’re taking, put together by a company called
Museum Hack, is based on the series, and offers a fan-friendly survey of
the sometimes inscrutable displays of the Met. You don’t have to be an
art historian (our guide is an aspiring actress) to understand what
Greek fire, Damascus blades, heraldry, mutilated men, samurai kamon, the
dragon-born St. Margaret of Antioch, and an early female pharaoh have to
do with wildfire, Valyrian steel, house words, and Clarke’s world-famous
alter ego.
And yet, despite her fame, Clarke has managed to spend a full half-hour
in the museum sponging up our guide’s trivia without being spotted. For
years, Clarke’s brown hair let her hide in plain sight, but she recently
bleached it an icy Targaryen blond. So, why the invisibility? Maybe it’s
her height. “We both have a thing about our stature not quite being
what people expect,” says her co-star Kit Harington, who, at five feet
eight, has six inches on Clarke. Maybe it’s her outfit—the gray
overcoat, cream sweater, and jeans are a far cry from the cloaks and
armor of Thrones. Or maybe it’s her bright, decidedly non-intimidating
personality. “When I’m goofing around with my pals, I’m
unrecognizable,” she says. Harington calls Clarke’s humor “naughty,”
and it’s certainly true that her informal, expletive-laced banter is a
far cry from Daenerys’s imperious tones. “Sometimes, if I’m in a really
bad mood,” Clarke notes, “people are like, ‘Khaleesi!’ ”
Finally, the spell of anonymity breaks, thanks to a display of
competitiveness worthy of Game of Thrones. Our guide has challenged us
to photograph as many birds and dragons as we can find in the paintings
and sculptures on the tour, and Clarke is approaching the task with her
usual effervescent zeal. Standing in the shadow of a stone Hatshepsut,
one of patriarchal Egypt’s first female pharaohs, she triumphantly
displays one of the winged targets she has captured on her phone. “This
little birdie: Boom!” she shouts, her voice ricocheting off the stone
walls. A pair of young men look over, then descend, and, in thick French
accents, ask for a photo. Clarke’s triumphant grin tightens into a
polite, distant smile.
There it is: the face of Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of
Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First
Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms,
Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons, who, over the course of seven
seasons, has climbed from powerless pawn to resolute conqueror, forcing
one rival after another to “bend the knee” or burn. As Daenerys has
risen, so has Clarke, morphing from a struggling actress and part-time
cater waiter to an international superstar and symbol of feminine
fierceness. That journey is “important and inspiring—particularly
now, in our climate,” says her close friend Rose Leslie, who played the
wildling warrior Ygritte in early seasons of Game of Thrones. “She’s at
the forefront of representing independent women.”
We still don’t know if, as many expect, Daenerys Targaryen will win the
right to rule the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, but we can be assured that
Emilia Clarke will hang up her platinum wig for good when Game of
Thrones ends its eight-season run, in 2019. There’s still a lot of
filming and post-production work to be done, but Clarke has already shot
her character’s final on-screen moments. “It fucked me up,” she says.
“Knowing that is going to be a lasting flavor in someone’s mouth of
what Daenerys is . . .”
“When it comes to that amount of money, you’re almost waiting for that to happen,” Clarke says of the turmoil on the Solo set. Clarke wears a dress by Louis Vuitton.
Clarke has good reason to feel unsettled. Letting go of a
culture-defining television role can be liberating, to be sure, but it
can also be deflating—or worse. Jon Hamm may always be seen as Don
Draper; Sarah Michelle Gellar is forever Buffy the Vampire Slayer;
Jennifer Aniston will never not be Rachel. Fortunately, Clarke
approaches this pivotal transition with a stubborn insistence on
behaving like a normal, grounded human being. And her upcoming credits
suggest that she’s greatly in demand beyond Westeros.
This month, Clarke, a self-described “achievement junkie,” joins the
rapidly expanding Star Wars universe in Solo, a highly scrutinized
origin story for Harrison Ford’s Han Solo. Her well-honed gift for
concealing every detail about her work—“Everything in my life is a
spoiler,” she says—helped her get into character. Director Ron
Howard, a Game of Thrones fan, explains that Qi’ra, Han Solo’s childhood
friend turned unreliable ally, is secretive, slippery, and morally
questionable—“a much different sort of a character” from Daenerys.
If Solo becomes a major hit, it will give Clarke a rare chance to leap
cleanly from one spectacularly successful genre franchise to another.
But even if it doesn’t, she has no shortage of options. An active
participant in Time’s Up, she has ambitious plans to write and produce
her own material—and create new opportunities for other women in the
industry. Discussing those issues, she begins to sound more like the
fiery Daenerys. “It becomes harder to separate you from the role when
you’ve been with it so long,” she admits.
Eight years ago, Dan Weiss and David Benioff were in trouble. Their
pilot for Game of Thrones, an adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s
popular A Song of Ice and Fire book series, was a disaster. Along with
re-shoots, the pair were looking to re-cast a few key roles, including
the pivotal part of Daenerys Targaryen. Tall, willowy, and fair-haired,
Tamzin Merchant, the actress originally cast as Khaleesi, was a far more
conventional match for the character on the page. The second time
around, Weiss and Benioff took a fresh look at the character.
“Emilia was the only person we saw—and we saw hundreds—who could
carry the full range that Daenerys required,” the pair explained in
tandem via e-mail. “Young actors aren’t often asked to play a
combination of Joan of Arc, Lawrence of Arabia, and Napoleon.”
When Clarke started on the series, Daenerys was downtrodden,
occasionally objectified, and stranded in a subplot that kept the
character geographically distant from the main story and the actress
isolated from most of her co-stars. “I was cut off from the rest of the
cast,” Clarke says. Over the years, as the famously cutthroat Thrones
has thinned its sprawling ensemble, Clarke has risen in the ranks,
snagging the show’s flashiest, most empowering moments.
In an era when network and streaming platforms alike are struggling to
get anyone to tune in, Game of Thrones has become one of the last
surviving holdovers from the must-see TV era. For a handful of weeks
every year, HBO owns Sunday nights, with devotees watching live to avoid
spoilers at the office Monday morning. Clearing its own very high
ratings bar, Thrones commanded an average of 32.8 million viewers in its
2017 season. Its 38 wins make it the most-awarded scripted-TV series in
Emmy history.
That glaring spotlight has made Daenerys a cultural touchstone—not to
mention a costume-party staple, with Madonna, Katy Perry, Khloé
Kardashian, and Kristen Bell among her many famous impersonators. At a
recent charity auction, Brad Pitt offered six figures to spend an
evening with Clarke and Harington, only to be outbid. Last year,
Daenerys finally powered into the heart of the series, earning
long-awaited screen time with Harington and the rest of the surviving
stars. Clarke, who has been nominated three times for best supporting
actress at the Emmys, may soon be gunning for lead honors.
“Everything in my life is a spoiler,” Clarke says.
Clarke’s upbringing in the bucolic countryside an hour outside of London
couldn’t be farther from the dysfunctional family dynamics that forged
the orphaned Daenerys. Emilia’s mother, Jennifer, is a businesswoman who
currently runs the Anima Foundation, a charity aimed at raising
awareness of specialty brain-injury care, and her father, Peter, was a
theatrical sound engineer who prized education above all else. “Your
bookshelf should be bigger than your TV,” he liked to remind Emilia and
her older brother, Bennett. “My mum, my brother, my dad, and I would
sit around a table, and my happiest place was just discussing stuff,”
Emilia says. “I really value intelligence. I’m one of the very
fortunate few people who really likes their family. I just like hanging
out with them.”
Clarke isn’t the first woman in her family to engage in high-stakes
identity juggling. Her maternal grandmother wore light makeup to
disguise the fact that she was half Indian, owing to her mother’s very
secret affair with a mysterious man from the colonial subcontinent.
“The fact that [my grandmother] had to hide her skin color,
essentially, and try desperately to fit in with everyone else must’ve
been incredibly difficult,” Clarke says. “So, yeah: history of
fighters.”
Emilia’s parents saved up to send her to a pair of upper-crust boarding
schools—Rye St. Antony and St. Edward’s, both in Oxford—but she
never felt at home with her much wealthier classmates. “I didn’t really
fit in, like everybody who ever went to school ever.” So she channeled
her energy into performing. She was rejected the first time she applied
to acting school, but eventually Drama Centre London claimed her from
the waiting list when another student broke her leg and dropped out.
There, she finally found the “artistically inclined” friends who would
keep her grounded amid the circus of international fame.
The jet-setting Clarke clings tightly to her roots even as her life and
career take her ever farther from the Home Counties. For one thing, she
recently got her brother a gig in the Thrones camera department. “This
job can be so alienating,” she says. “You’re in a trailer by yourself.
You’re in a car by yourself. You’re in a plane. You’re in a plane.
You’re in a plane. That’s what success looks like if you’re an actor.
Success looks like being alone.” Clarke stays sharp by devouring
“nerdy” podcasts on a range of topics from politics to science.
“She’s so informed,” says Rose Leslie. “She has an opinion on every
topic.”
Clarke’s father passed away in 2016 after a long battle with cancer. At
the time, Emilia was in the U.S. shooting the upcoming thriller Above
Suspicion and couldn’t break away to say her final good-byes. “It still
sucks. Grief sucks. He doesn’t know what I’m doing now,” she says.
“That’s it before I start crying.” After a couple of romances with
famous men—first, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, then,
reportedly, actor Jai Courtney, a brief souvenir from her Terminator
Genisys shoot—Clarke swore off dating actors. In fact, she hasn’t been
romantically linked in some time. When Solo premiered at Cannes, in May,
she had hoped to walk the red carpet with her brother, and her goal in
general is to keep her relationships out of the news. “The guys that
I’ve met in my life that are dicks, I voluntarily walk the fuck away
from them,” she says. “That’s just bad taste. People shouldn’t know
about those choices.”
Clarke usually appears in public with various non-famous “mates” from
her drama-school days. Her “perma-plus-one” is Lola Frears, daughter
of director Stephen Frears. “I ain’t got me no celebrity friends,”
Clarke says. “My squad? They don’t let me get away with anything.
There’s not a lot of actors I relate to.” Leslie, a rare exception to
Emilia’s rule, confirms that Clarke’s longtime friends keep her in
check: “There would be a ticking off or a bollocking if they felt she
was no longer the lovely lady that they have always known.”
Top: Clarke and a dragon on Game of Thrones.
Above: Clarke, Joonas Suotamo, Woody Harrelson, Donald Glover, and Alden Ehrenreich in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
The Star Wars tradition of featuring morally upright heroines, among
them Carrie Fisher’s General Leia, Daisy Ridley’s Rey, and Felicity
Jones’s Jyn Erso, was part of what drew Emilia Clarke to the role of
Qi’ra in Solo, but it was the chance to break the mold that really sold
her. “We’re going to hit you with a character that could very easily
well be a dude, because you question her motives,” she says, sitting in
a back corner of the Met’s no-frills cafeteria snacking on a pear and
sipping English-breakfast tea from a paper cup. “That’s really fucking
exciting in the Star Wars universe, because that has never happened.”
Before accepting the Solo role, Clarke had to ask Game of Thrones
show-runners Weiss and Benioff for permission to complicate their plans
for a final season by adding a demanding Star Wars filming schedule to
the mix. They didn’t hesitate. “Solo felt like a great fit that would
let her show off her versatility,” Weiss and Benioff explained. “Also,
we figured she’d probably get to shoot a ray gun. Ray guns are something
we just can’t offer, unfortunately.”
Swapping dragons for ray guns, Emilia Clarke was eager to prove her
mettle in a whole new galaxy. But that plan hit a snag when the Solo
production fell spectacularly and publicly apart. “I’m not gonna lie,”
Clarke says. “I struggled with Qi’ra quite a lot. I was like: ‘Y’all
need to stop telling me that she’s “film noir,” because that ain’t a
note.’ ” Frustrated by the lack of direction, she turned to Solo’s
father-and-son screenwriters, Lawrence and Jon Kasdan, for support.
Then, four and a half months into shooting, co-directors Phil Lord and
Chris Miller exited the project, citing “creative differences.”
Production was put on hold until they were replaced by Ron Howard, a
longtime friend of franchise creator George Lucas’s. With a brand-new
director and an ambitious re-shoot schedule—Clarke reluctantly agrees
when I call those first months “a high-budget dress rehearsal”—Solo
still had to hit its opening date, in May of the following year.
“I get fucking paid the same as my guy friends. We made sure of that.”
Clarke says Howard’s arrival “saved” the movie: “All hail to
[Lucasfilm president] Kathy [Kennedy] for hiring Ron.” Slipping
into a mocking impression of herself, Clarke re-enacts a self-pitying
therapy session with Howard over a private meal they shared before
resuming production. “He even feigned enthusiasm!” she says. “I know
for a fact he had that discussion with everybody. I think we all came to
set feeling like his favorite. It makes for a really happy load of
actors, with our egos.”
Howard recalls that dinner a bit differently. The former child star of
The Andy Griffith Show saw in Clarke “the kind of pragmatism and a
can-do spirit that often comes from people who have cut their teeth
doing television.”
“I know some of how tough it was for her,” Harington says. “But she’s
pretty tough as well.”
Clarke wasn’t privy to everything that led up to the director swap, but
she wasn’t entirely surprised, either. “When it comes to that amount of
money, you’re almost waiting for that to happen. Money fucks us all up,
doesn’t it? There’s so much pressure. Han Solo is a really beloved
character. This is a really important movie for the franchise as a
whole. It’s a shit ton of money. A shit ton of people. A shit ton of
expectations.”
Solo wasn’t the first troubled blockbuster to test Clarke’s resilience.
If anything, the production of 2015’s Terminator Genisys was more
chaotic. She watched frequent Thrones director Alan Taylor get “eaten
and chewed up on Terminator. He was not the director I remembered. He
didn’t have a good time. No one had a good time.” When the film
underperformed at the box office, she was “relieved” to not have to
return for any sequels. News of the rocky production traveled, and
Clarke says the crew on the famously disastrous Fantastic Four, which
was filming nearby, even had jackets made that read, AT LEAST WE’RE NOT
ON TERMINATOR. “Just to give you a summary,” she says, laughing.
Rumors spreading between film sets is one thing, but the Solo tumult was
covered exhaustively in the trades and on fan sites, adding another
layer of pressure to an already pressurized project. “I hope we did it
good, then, because people have all this gossip,” Clarke says. “I
don’t want people to go, ‘That’s the bit where it all went wrong. That’s
the bit, I know it.’ I just really hope that people have a good time,
that it’s good, and, you know, selfishly, that I’m not shit and that
people don’t write reviews going, ‘Oh my God, that’s, like, the worst
acting I’ve ever seen in my life. Wow. How did they give her the
part?’ ”
For all her anxieties about how her performance will go over, Clarke and
I are both energized by the Solo footage we’ve seen. Clarke’s easy
chemistry with Donald Glover, who plays fan favorite Lando Calrissian,
is evident from their very first on-screen meeting. And though her
shifting allegiances mean she has to play a range of emotions opposite
Alden Ehrenreich’s Han Solo, she endows every twist with an undercurrent
of romantic possibility. Tonally closer to the Indiana Jones movies than
to, say, Rogue One, Solo marks the franchise’s return to lighthearted,
fast-paced capers.
Clarke—who spends most Thrones battles on the backs of her C.G.I.
dragons—was eager to jump into the fray with some hand-to-hand combat.
“She had to deal with quite a large sword and some pretty elaborate
fight choreography, and she made it look easy,” Ehrenreich says. With
all the re-shoots and reconfigured plotting, she also had to fight to
keep some of her favorite moments in. “That is going to be badass as
fuck,” she told the filmmakers of a showstopping Qi’ra moment that made
the cut. “Don’t forget your audience.”
Clarke wears clothing by Salvatore Ferragamo; shoes by the Row; earrings by Shihara.
Long before they shared a scene together, Clarke and Harington had
become friends thanks to their time on the Game of Thrones promotional
circuit. It was through Harington that Clarke met Rose Leslie. An adept
mimic, Clarke impersonates a “smitten” Harington mooning over his
on-screen lover and future real-life fiancée in the early days of the
show: “There’s the best human in the world. She’s called Rose.”
Clarke has a teasing relationship with Harington. “I’ll tell him, ‘Kit,
stop being a dick—stop being so grumpy.’ Like I would with my
brother.” And as the two transition in these final seasons from
real-life friends to partners in TV’s biggest romance (albeit one
complicated by incest), the ribbing has only increased. “If you’ve
known someone for six years, and they’re best friends with your
girlfriend, and you’re best friends with them,” Harington says, “there
is something unnatural and strange about doing a love scene. We’ll end
up kissing and then we’re just pissing ourselves with laughter because
it’s so ridiculous.”
“She’s goofy,” Weiss and Benioff confirm. “We have tried to let some
of Emilia’s humor and light seep into Daenerys whenever possible. Who
says conquerors can’t be funny?” A memorable Season Four conversation
between Daenerys and her right-hand woman, Missandei, concerning a
eunuch’s “pillar and stones,” for instance, is much more Clarke than
Targaryen. Sadly, it’s unclear how much space there will be in the
show’s climactic final season for bawdy, Clarke-ish humor. “I’m doing
all this weird shit,” Clarke says. “You’ll know what I mean when you
see it.”
In the final episodes of a show with a body count as high as Game of
Thrones’, Clarke never really knows when she might be filming her last
moments with a member of the cast. She’s also shooting for the first
time with several of the show’s top stars, including Sophie Turner and
Maisie Williams, who play the formidable Stark sisters.
Clarke is well aware that the strong women of the series are leaving
some kind of imprint on the culture, but she’s saving up all her
big-picture reflections on Daenerys for later: “This is going to be a
Band-Aid that I’m going to rip off.” To help with that process, she
started keeping a daily journal of her last season. With cell phones
banned from the set due to security concerns, it’s her best hope of
chronicling the final days of Daenerys. Selfies are off limits, but
Clarke has asked set photographer Helen Sloan to snap the occasional
behind-the-scenes photo. Both the journal and the photos, Clarke hints,
may be available to the show’s fans someday.
Clarke is unsurprisingly, and contractually, evasive when it comes to
specifics of the concluding six episodes. Heavy hints in the most recent
season indicate that, in addition to contending with the usual climactic
end-of-the-world crises, Daenerys will also be grappling with more
intimate parenthood and family issues. Here, Clarke and her on-screen
alter ego may have something in common. Friends like Leslie and
Harington are settling down to build their own families (“Their wedding
is going to be siiiiick,” Clarke says), and an old schoolmate recently
made Clarke godmother to a highly photogenic baby boy who makes regular
appearances on her Instagram account. She lights up when talking about
him.
Talking about her own parents evokes other emotions. The wounds from the
loss of her father are still fresh, but her mother remains an
inspiration. If all goes according to plan, it’s Jennifer Clarke who
will provide the map for Clarke’s very first post-Thrones steps. After
the show ends, Clarke plans to re-create a road trip her mother took in
1972 to Yosemite and the redwoods of Northern California. With best
friend and scriptwriter Lola Frears by her side, Clarke intends to spend
part of the trip working on ideas for new projects. Her agents offered
to take these ideas to “guys” with writing experience, but her answer
to that was pure Daenerys: “No, I’m going to take it to me.”
Clarke wears a dress by Max Mara; earring by Irene Neuwirth. Throughout: hair products by Orlando Pita Play; makeup by Marc Jacobs Beauty; nail enamel by Chanel.
Citing Reese Witherspoon, Greta Gerwig, and other actresses turned
creators as inspiration, Clarke says she wants to work with as many
female filmmakers as she can. As for the conventional industry wisdom
that women can’t work together without infighting? “It’s fucking
bullshit. It’s so annoying.” An active member of Time’s Up, Clarke
negotiated with Weiss and Benioff in 2014 to ensure she maintained
parity with her male counterparts. She and four co-stars—Harington,
Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister), Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), and
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister)—reportedly each landed
$300,000 per episode, a dazzling figure that skyrocketed to half a
million per episode for the final two seasons. “I get fucking paid the
same as my guy friends,” Clarke says. “We made sure of that.”
And while Clarke would be thrilled to have her own Lady Bird or Big
Little Lies, that’s not all she’s after. She says she’s “desperate” to
make documentaries and shine a light on underserved causes. “That’s the
shit that gets me going personally.” Inspired by her father’s cancer
ordeal, Clarke is especially passionate about the risks Brexit poses to
the U.K.’s National Health Service, and she was recently named
ambassador to the Royal College of Nursing. “That’s something I have in
common with Dae-nerys,” she says suddenly, after several hours of
explaining all the reasons she and her character are nothing alike. “I
really feel for people and I want to help them. Not to sound too much
like Oprah Winfrey.” She pauses, and thinks again. “Fuck that, I’m
gonna sound like Oprah and I’m going to be proud of it.”
In the midst of the twin tornadoes of Star Wars and Game of Thrones,
Clarke acknowledges that most of her choices these days are “studio
choices.” And if Solo is a hit, Clarke could be working for Lucasfilm
for years to come. But Harington sees something else in her future:
“She’s done, far more than me or most people in the cast, these very
high-budget, big-hitting blockbusters. Hopefully Star Wars continues for
her and she does more of them. But I think she’s an incredibly talented
actor, and I would love to see her do something which is a more focused
character piece, because the ones she’s done are brilliant.” Clarke’s
effervescent performance in 2016’s romantic weepy Me Before You—a
surprise hit at the box office—hints at what she’s capable of.
Clarke wants to stretch herself, and explore a new-media landscape where
creators no longer have to rely on large companies in order to get their
projects made. “Everyone can. Get your iPhone out. Let’s do something.
You know what I mean?” And with 17 million followers on Instagram,
Clarke has the power to make and launch her own projects. Her recent
Thrones-themed fund-raising Instagram video for the Royal College of
Nursing Foundation racked up more than seven million views in just three
days.
All that takes some of the heat off Clarke as she decides how to follow
up roles in two of entertainment’s biggest franchises. She doesn’t
necessarily need another monster hit. She can afford to take her time,
listen to herself, and do something that feels true to who she
is—whoever that may be.
The most obvious evidence of the blur between Daenerys and Clarke is the
relatively new shock of blond hair on her head. “I did this, which was
frigging stupid,” she says, fingering the blunt-cut ends of her
bleached hair.
When Kit Harington trimmed his famous curls in 2015, fans were led to
believe his character, presumed dead, wouldn’t be returning to the show
the following season. (He did.) But Clarke swears her decision to go
blonde has nothing at all to do with Daenerys’s fate. “I got to a point
where I said I just want to look in the mirror and see something
different. So I was just like, ‘Fuck it, it’s the last season. I’m going
to dye my hair blond.’ ” Clarke jokes that she immediately felt
remorse and bought nine baseball caps online. “But they don’t go with
your outfit, so I don’t wear them.”
Clarke’s brown hair had always been her shield. The blond hair makes it
harder to slip back into her pre-fame life. Partying with her old
friends is tricky because their friends get “weird” about it, and she
misses the mundane pleasures of, say, running errands for her mother.
“What I get most heartbroken about is that those opportunities are
almost completely gone.” Then she catches herself, and apologizes for
moaning about the “champagne problems” of fame. “If I were reading
this, I’d be like, ‘Cheer the fuck up, love.’ ”
PREPARE TO DYE
Clarke says her new hair color is unrelated to Daenerys’s fate: “I said I just want to look in the mirror and see something different.” Clarke wears a top by the Row;
earrings by Yael Sonia.
Back underneath that statue at the Met, Emilia Clarke cranes her neck up
to get a closer look at the ancient pharaoh’s smooth granite face.
Hatshepsut wears a false beard that allowed her to pass more easily
through the male-dominated world. Our guide points out a faint piece of
carved string running up the pharaoh’s jawline holding the disguise in
place. Thinking about it later, Clarke, who knows a thing or two about
disguises, passing, alter egos, and powerful women, shakes her head in
astonishment. “That is some fascinating shit right there.”
A towering granite Daenerys statue may never find its way into the
hallowed halls of the Met, but it’s not clear Emilia Clarke wants that
anyway. As we duck out of the Met a bit behind schedule, only to find
that it’s raining and our sleek hired car is nowhere in sight, Clarke
gamely suggests we rush out into the downpour and dive into the back of
a yellow cab. Our driver doesn’t recognize Clarke, either, which puts
her at ease. Unsure how to get to where we’re going, he passes his
smartphone to her so she can type the hotel’s address into his G.P.S.
“Don’t worry, mate,” she announces. “Your little app will get us
there!” A satisfied smile plays on her face as the taxi twists, turns,
and bumps along. She looks happier than she ever has riding a dragon.
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